Documenting Nazi Plunder of European
Art

By Greg Bradsher

During and after World War II the United States Government, in part, through
the Safehaven Program to identify, recover, and restitute Nazi looted assets,
expended considerable resources on the looted art issue. It was a big issue,
given the fact that upwards 20% of the art of Europe was looted by the Nazis.
The American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic
Monuments in War Areas (The Robert Commission), the U.S. Army's intelligence
unites and Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives officers, the Office of Strategic
Services' Art Looting Unit, and State Department Foreign Service officers,
among others, were engaged in efforts to identify, recover, and restitute looted
art works.

Much looted art was recovered and restituted. However, despite the efforts
of the American and other governments, many thousands of pieces of art were
never recovered by their rightful owners. As late as 1994, 16 of the 40 top
paintings were still missing. This past March, Philip Saunders, editor of Trace,
the stolen art register, stated that "there are at least 100,000 works
of art still missing from the Nazi occupation."

Fifty years later, as questions abound Nazi looted assets that were never recovered,
interest in the looted art has been rekindled. In August 1997, the National Jewish
Museum established a Holocaust Art Restitution Project, and in September the World
Jewish Congress began exploring the possibilities of establishing a similar project.
At a National Jewish Museum-sponsored conference held in Washington, DC, on September
4, 1997, one individual who spoke about his grandfather's Degas being taken
noted that "information is at the crux of the problem." Much of the
pertinent information resides in holdings of the National Archives, including
the records of the agencies mentioned above as well as the Captured German records
and the War Crimes records. As art sleuth Willi Korte was quoted in a New York
newspaper in late August, "… in the National Archives…we have perhaps
the most important collection of records which can easily be used to form a very
solid foundation for such a project," referring to the Holocaust Art Restitution
Project.

Indeed, the National Archives at College Park has a substantial quantity
of records pertaining to Nazi looted art. These records range from thousands of
intelligence reports to over 12,000 still photographs accumulated by the Roberts
Commission. As always the Archives staff at College Park stands by to assist researchers
in their quest for information about the looted art.

American soldier inspects German loot
stored in a church at Elligen, Germany, April 24, 1945
(NARA #111-SC-204899)

The Fuhrer at the Haus of German Art, Munich
(NARA, RG 242, Collection of Foriegn Records Seized, #HLB/2009)

Hermann Goering's art collection, stolen from museums across Europe, is stored temporarily in building near Berchtesgaden while being catalogued, June 9, 1945. (NARA #111-SC-207820)

The Finding Aid: You may
access
the Finding Aid to Records at the National Archives at College Park at the Department of State's World
Wide Web site. The finding aid is the appendix to the Interagency Group on Nazi
Assets' Preliminary Study on U.S. and Allied Efforts To Recover and Restore Gold and
Other Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany During World War II. Both the study and the
finding aid are available in a PDF format. A link to a free PDF reader is provided at the
Department of State Web site.

This article appears in the November 1997 edition
of The Record. To be placed on the mailing list for this free newsletter, please
contact Roger Bruns of the NARA Policy and Communications Staff at 202-357-5482, ext. 257
or send your request to inquire@nara.gov.

The photographs used in this article are
from the records series: Signal Corps Photographs of American Military
Activity; Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, Record Group 111.
These images are available from the Still Picture Branch at
the National Archives at College Park,
MD. A description of this records series is available in the Online Catalog.